


Darkgrove

by scribespirare



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood, Flash horror story, Gen, Graphic description of a monster, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Violence, Mountain God - Freeform, Old legends, idk how to tag original works hkkssvvv
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 17:37:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21165524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribespirare/pseuds/scribespirare
Summary: Once, Lana had found those stories funny, quaint. A forest god and his magical bell, a warning of prices to pay.Nothing seems magical or funny anymore.





	Darkgrove

**Author's Note:**

> helloooo I wrote this story a few years back for a horror lit class i was taking. after mentioning it on my blog and getting a few questions i decided i might as well post it. I don't write original stuff often and this is pretty short but i hope yall enjoy regardless!

There’s a ringing in her ears, ancient and hollow, and it pulls her so quickly from slumber it leaves her physically reeling.

She lays in bed a moment, panting, waiting for the ringing to subside the way nightmares are supposed to.

It doesn’t.

The sound originates from somewhere over her head, and the walls of her tiny loft seem to vibrate with each long toll. If anything the ringing is louder now that she’s awake and able to focus on it.

Her movements are slow and clumsy, stiffened by shock and the residues of sleep, as she climbs out of bed, throws a heavy dressing gown over her pajamas and stuffs her feet into a pair of slippers. She’s in the kitchen, trying to find a flashlight she swears she put in this drawer, when the banging starts up.

Loud and obnoxious, an indistinct voice tries to yell over the racket.

She abandons her search, slips quietly down the old, dark staircase to the ground floor. It’s disorienting that she can’t hear the squeaking of the old wood under her slippered feet. The door too makes no discernible noise when she pulls it open, at least not one she can hear over the insistent ringing.

Henry Kelsch glares angrily at her from her doorstep. He looks sleep disheveled, bags under his eyes, bare feet shoved hastily into a pair of work boots.

His mouth opens, like he’s going to speak, but she shakes her head, takes his elbow to lead him away from the building. It’s an old wooden thing, as old as the town itself. The library is on the ground floor, her tiny loft just above, and then the bell tower sits perched on the top, a quiet dead thing thought defunct. Until now.

Moving away doesn’t seem to make the ringing any less loud, but at least the walls aren’t vibrating around her anymore.

“What the hell, Lana!?” are Henry’s first words, slightly shouted, only just intelligible. She’s not surprised he was the first on her doorstep. He’s one of only a few people who actually live in the town proper. Everyone else has farms and cabins and tiny houses tucked into the foot hills of the mountain; close, close enough to hear the bell surely, but not close enough they can just stomp over in their boxers and a t-shirt.

“I have no idea,” she tries to tell him, but doesn’t know if the sound actually carries. Before she finds out there comes a flash of head lights down the only paved road, the faint rumbling of an engine as the vehicle draws closer. She can’t make out color or model in the bleaching light of the full moon, but doesn’t have to when Nancy Peterson hops out of the cab and comes towards them.

Lloyd Griesenberg, Hannah Felix, and several others crawl out of the bed. They live closer to town, probably hitched a ride with Nancy, who looks dazed by just how loud the bell is up close. She must have driven like a bat out of hell to get here so quickly.

“I thought it was broken,” Nancy yells.

A crowd is quickly forming around them, everyone who lives within town finally pulled from their beds, mingling with the few Nancy had driven over. Nobody looks happy to be up and about.

“It’s midnight!” somebody else yells, and a different voice pleads, “Somebody fix it!”

Lloyd shakes his head, even as the crowd erupts into noise. Out of everyone, he has the most knowledge of the bell, has been up inside the tower countless times in order to figure out just why it won’t work. He once told Lana it wasn’t a matter of broken mechanisms, or cracked pieces. Everything was just frozen. Nothing would move, no matter how much force was used.

A shrill cry cuts through the air, more piercing than even the bell. Lana turns, spots tiny Amber on her mother’s hip, big alligator tears rolling down her cheeks, clenched fists pressed to her ears. Her brother, only a few years older, clings to their mother’s leg, obviously just as scared.

“Sorry,” Elizabeth says to Lana. “They were terrified by that old wives tale. I couldn’t leave without them.”

Once, Lana had found those stories funny, quaint. A forest god and his magical bell, a warning of prices to pay.

Standing in the middle of a shifting, unsettled crowd, the bell ringing so loudly Lana thinks her head might split with it, nothing seems magical or funny anymore.

Someone, somewhere has found Lloyd a flashlight, and a different person has scrounged up a pair of ear plugs for him.

Nobody has offered to go up to the tower with him.

Lana at least has to go up and unlock everything, but she finds herself hesitant, even as Lloyd steps away from the crowd and beckons her.

She shifts her weight, unsure, everything in her wanting to stay right here in the middle of the townspeople. If the way she can see Lloyd’s hand trembling is any indicator, he feels the same.

But before either of them can draw up enough courage, everything seems to stop at once.

It’s like being sucked into a vacuum, a sudden, deafening silence all around, her ears ringing, her head spinning. Despite the sudden dizziness, all of her attention is drawn slowly and inexorably to the East. She can feel the faint shifting around her that says she’s not the only one, that the entire crowd is turning together to look out past the dark shape of her home, with it’s now silent bell tower stretching high into the midnight sky.

If she said it was humanoid, with two legs and two arms and pale torso- but no, that’s all wrong. Because the legs are bent in unnatural ways, ending in dark, cloven hooves, the head deer-like, huge bone white antlers shoved roughly up through a coarse pelt. Against the backdrop of shadowy trees it seems unbelievably tall.

It tips its head up, mouth opening just a touch in such a way that it reminds Lana of her cat at home when he’s on a hunt. A tongue, black and glistening, flashes between the parted lips. Its emaciated chest heaves.

Everything about it makes her skin crawl with an unnamed dread. Around her the crowd is unnaturally silent and still, as if possessed by some dark awe, the rabbit caught in the predator gaze of the wolf. They all tremble and wait together, for the moment a single entity, as six dark, fathomless eyes fix on their huddled mass.

The thing takes a single, lopsided step forward. It’s hands, huge, scraggly claws, too-long fingers, glisten wetly under the moonlight, a thick viscous fluid dripping into the clean grass below. Her hindbrain screams blood.

Nancy, Nancy whose house is to the East and whose children are terrifyingly alone, makes a small noise. It breaks the spell, the crowd shifting and murmuring with the kind of stiff anxiety that makes the rabbit watch as its death approaches instead of running.

Lana suddenly becomes aware of her pulse again, loud and racing, like her heart had stopped beating all together and is now trying to compensate. Her breath shudders out of her body, limbs numb. For some reason her teeth are bared, an unconscious animal reaction that feels tremulous at best, completely useless at worst.

The thing takes another step forward, and then another, hooves trailing as its moves faster. It begins its approach. 

**Author's Note:**

> reminder to come check me out on [tumblr](https://scribespirare.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
